The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University (NSSA) today announced the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Stig Abell, as their new Chair of Judges after TV presenter Mel Giedroyc stood down due to unforeseen work commitments. Abell, a double first in English from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is a journalist, author, editor and broadcaster and is a regular presenter on BBC Radio4’s Front Row and contributor to Sky News.
He is joined on the panel by an esteemed group of award-winning writers and poets including short story writer and 2016 BBC NSSA winner, K J Orr, Granta’s ‘20 under 40’ novelist, Benjamin Markovits, one of last year’s shortlisted writers, returning judge, Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio, and multi award winning poet and Cambridge alumna Sarah Howe.
“What a thrill to be involved in the BBC National Short Story with Cambridge University; I cannot wait to get reading. I was probably a late convert to short stories as a medium but was enticed in by some great British writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham and Jean Rhys. This award is a great chance for us to find and celebrate talent, and wallow happily in storytelling for a while.”Stig Abell, Chair of the BBC National Short Story Award Judging Panel
The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. In addition, a new initiative, the BBC Student Critics’ Award with First Story and Cambridge University (SCA), will give selected 16-18 year olds around the UK the opportunity to read, discuss and critique the five shortlisted NSSA stories from Easter 2018.
Last year’s winner of the BBC National Short Story Award was Cynan Jones for his ‘exhilarating, terrifying and life-affirming’ story ‘The Edge of the Shoal’ with previous alumni including Lionel Shriver, Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel, Jon McGregor and William Trevor.
Full ‘Terms and Conditions’ for the award are available online at www.bbc.co.uk/nssa and www.bbc.co.uk/ywa. Submissions for 2018 closed at 9am (GMT) Monday 12th March 2018.
The shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University will be announced on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row at 7.15pm on Friday 14th September 2018. Readings of the shortlisted stories will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 17th to Friday 21st September and interviews with the shortlisted writers will air from Friday 14th September 2018 on Front Row. The announcement of the winner will be broadcast live from the Award ceremony in Cambridge on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row from 7.15pm on Tuesday 2nd October 2018.
THE JUDGES ON THIS YEAR’S BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD PANEL ARE:
Stig Abell is the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously the Director of the Press Complaints Commission and Managing Editor of the Sun newspaper, he is a regular broadcaster on the BBC and Sky News and had his own show on LBC until recently. He has written and reviewed for many national publications and is now a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. Abell was born in Nottingham and educated at Loughborough Grammar School before graduating with a double first in English from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His first book, How Britain Really Works, is published by Hodder & Stoughton in May 2018.
Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award; it was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her poems have appeared in journals including The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, The Telegraph, Ploughshares and Poetry, as well as anthologies such as Ten: The New Wave and four editions of The Best British Poetry. She has performed her work at festivals internationally and on BBC Radio 3 & 4. She is the founding editor of Prac Crit, an online journal of poetry and criticism. From 2010-2015, she was a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before taking up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at University College London. Previous honours include a Hawthornden Fellowship and the Harper-Wood Studentship for English Poetry, as well as fellowships from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She previously taught on the undergraduate certificate in creative writing at Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education and is a Lecturer in Poetry at King’s College London.
Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London, Oxford and Berlin and now lives in London. A former professional basketball player, he has taught high school English, worked at a cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Esquire, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review. He has published seven novels and his most recent novel, You Don’t Have To Live Like This, won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2015. His forthcoming novel A Weekend in New York will be published in June 2018 by Faber & Faber. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and he was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with his story ‘The Collector’ in 2017. He teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. K J Orr won the BBC National Short Story Award 2016 for ‘Disappearances’. She is the author of the short story collection Light Box, which was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2017. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and have appeared in publications including Best British Short Stories, the Irish Times, the Dublin Review and the White Review. Her essays and reviews have been published by Poetry Review, the TLS and the Guardian, among others. She is a Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Di Speirs edited the Woman’s Hour serial for three years, produced the first ever Book of the Week, and has directed many Book at Bedtimes as well as dramas. She is now Editor, Books, leading the London Readings team and also editing Open Book and Book Club on BBC Radio 4 and World Book Club on the BBC World Service. A long-time advocate of the formidable power of the short story, she has been closely involved in the BBC National Short Story Award since its inception twelve years ago and is a regular judge on the panel.
